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Thursday, November 2, 2017

Strengthening its
position as the third largest startup ecosystem across the world, amidst
intensifying competition from countries like UK and Israel, India continues its
momentum of being one of the most vibrant landscape for start-ups. Adding over
1000 tech start-ups in 2017, taking the total number of tech
start-ups to 5000-5200,

India is witnessing a rapid rise in the B2B tech
start-up landscape, focused on verticals like healthtech, fintech, and
ecommerce/aggregators. While Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR and Mumbai retained their
position as the key start-up hubs in India, 20% of the start-ups emerged from
tier II/III cities. These trends were discussed at the launch of the 2017
edition of the NASSCOM-Zinnov report on the ‘Indian Start-up
Ecosystem – Traversing the maturity cycle’, released on the sidelines
of the of the annual flagship NASSCOM Product Conclave 2017.

Sharing his
thoughts, Raman Roy, Chairman, NASSCOM, and CEO and MD,
Quatrro Global Services, said, “The Indian technology industry is renowned globally
for its pioneering innovation and the start-ups arena is no different. India is
one of the fastest growing start-up landscape in the world and every major
accelerator, investor, angel group, is participating in becoming a part of this
growth journey. Today, Indian ecosystem is flooded with innovative ideas and
needs the right channel and guidance in terms of acceleration, scaling up and
funding to continue to disrupt.”

ECOSYSTEM RIPE FOR
HEALTHY GROWTH THROUGH VERTICALIZATION AND INNOVATIVE BUSINESS MODELS

With 40% of startups
in the B2B segment, B2B’s share in the overall tech start-up funding is over
30%. Corporates are playing a vital role in supporting these with over 50+
collaboration programs, 20+ corporate accelerators (recording a 33% YoY
growth), and 30-40 active corporate investors, thus increasing their role in
the rise of the start-up ecosystem.

Fin-tech start-up base
is estimated to be 360 in 2017 indicating at 31% YoY growth with over $200 mn
funding received in H1-2017, recording a growth of 135% since H1-2016.
Sub-segments like digital payments and lending are maturing, while wealth
management and insur-tech emerging as growth areas. Implementation of advanced
technology also becoming prominent, with 33% of fintech
funding towards advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence
and Analytics.

Witnessing a 28% YoY
growth in 2017, Health-tech vertical has an estimated total base of 320
start-ups. The vertical also garnered a total funding of $160 mn in H1-2017, up
by 129% since H1-2016. Areas like health information management,
aggregator/ecommerce have continued to mature with growth in areas like anomaly
detection, disease monitoring, and tele-health/tele-medicine. As for advanced
technologies, 31% of health-tech funding went towards Artificial Intelligence,
IoT, and Analytics.

With over 60%
start-ups, the B2C tech start-up segment focused on creating innovative
business models and taking the vertical approach, securing close to 70% of the
overall tech start-up funding in H1 2017. Leading vertical in the B2C segment
are travel and hospitality, food-tech, fin-tech, and health-tech.

Speaking on the
occasion, R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM, said, “The
Indian startup ecosystem is maturing, driven by young, diverse and inclusive
entrepreneurial landscape. This is leading to emergence of focused domain
solutions for verticals like healthcare, agriculture, and education. Findings
of the report is a testimony to the potential of the start-up landscape and the
scope of growth and opportunity that India presents. NASSCOM will continue its
drive towards catalysing deep tech start-ups, build category leaders and
support start-ups to create for India.”

RISE OF NEW-AGE
ADVANCED-TECH START-UPS

Growing at 5-year CAGR
of 30%, advanced tech start-ups focused on creating solutions in segments
like Artificial Intelligence, Analytics, Augmented Reality / Virtual reality,
Blockchain and Internet of Things, among others. Enterprise and SMB-focused
horizontal solutions start-ups, 90% of which is SaaS-based, are also witnessing
significant inflow of funding.

GROWING FROM
STRENGTH-TO-STRENGTH: DRAMATIC RISE IN UNICORN FUNDING AND M&A

Unicorn funding took
centerstage with big deals announced in the year. Investors from non-US
countries expanded their investments in Indian startups. Indian unicorns
in the B2C space continue to garner global funds and stir-up the competitive
landscape. With a growth of 167%, the funding of entire Indian start-up
ecosystem (led by unicorns) amounted to $ 6.4 bn in H1-2017. The average
funding for B2B tech start-ups in 2017 saw an increase of 5% while B2C tech
start-up average funding saw a decline of 10%.

Driven by the need to
enhance tech capabilities, expand markets and portfolio, global corporates are
now drawn towards the Indian tech start-up arena. H1-2017 saw 50+ M&A
deals, indicating at a growth of 25% since H1-2016. Over 325 start-ups
emerging, with YoY growth of 18%, catering to social challenges in the areas of
healthcare and education, and are thus building solutions for India, creating
social impact.

BUILDING A ROBUST WAY
FORWARD FOR GROWTH

Continuing the ‘By
India, For India, Of India’ movement, the Indian tech start-ups will continue
to innovate enabled by technology and newer business models and will have a
long-lasting impact in improving the quality of start-ups arising from India,
in the coming years. NASSCOM with continue to catalyze and support deep
tech Startups, and help build category leaders who can create solutions for
India. The top priorities for the various other stakeholders will be
as follows:

·For start-ups: Building products that address
need-gaps and challenges, defining a full-bodied go-to-market strategy to
scale-up, while building a team in the technology, domain, sales, and customer
experience.

Epicor Software
Corporation, a global provider of industry specific software to
promote business growth, announced today the appointment of a country-wide distributor
to accelerate business growth and meet demand for enterprise resource planning (ERP)
solutions across India. The partnership will see Redington
India, one of the country’s
largest technology distributors, selecting and training specialist resellers
from its network of over 20,000 business partners to grow the Epicor customer
base.

Anand Chakravarthy, Presidentat
Redingtoncommented, “Epicor ERP is a
great fit for midmarket manufacturing companies in India looking to grow.
Adding Epicor ERP to our portfolio will enable us to capitalise on the currently
untapped market potential. The modern architecture of Epicor ERP will not only
work today, but will enable customers to successfully deal with future challenges
such as preparing for Industry 4.0, as more and more smart technologies are adopted.”

Sabby Gill, executive vice
president, international at Epicor Software commented, “Whilst India is one of
the fastest growing economies in the world, it is also a digitally advanced
market. As one of the largest technology distributors in India, Redington has
an experienced and dedicated team on the ground that can enable local
manufacturers to digitally transform their companies and grow their businesses.
Thiru Vengadam, regional vice president, will spearhead the strategy to grow
our footprint and help companies thrive through ERP.”

As a distributor Redington
will identify, appoint, train and equip resellers, taking full responsibility
for effectively managing the delivery and deployment of Epicor ERP solutions in
India. In return, Epicor will provide Redington with the necessary support to
deliver its solutions to the market, including marketing, professional services,
training, and access to Epicor University with certification for partners.

The State Bank of India (SBI), the largest public-sector bank of
India has chosen Office 365, the cloud powered productivity solution from
Microsoft to improve communication and collaboration among its workforce,
addressing the banking behemoth’s requirement of transforming it into a modern
workplace.

This is one of the largest deployments of Office 365 in
India, spanning SBI’s countrywide network of 23,423 branches, enabling 263,000
employees and servicing more than 500 million customer accounts.

SBI employees will now experience a modern digital workplace
platform that will empower them to collaborate effectively from any device
anywhere (Android, iOS, Mac and Windows), provide an integrated experience and
reduce complexity. Employees will be able to use familiar and easy-to-use tools
naturally in everyday work, while addressing key aspects of data security and
sovereignty. Microsoft has also consolidated SBI’s messaging and collaboration
server infrastructure in 17 countries, helping it save more than USD 200,000
annually.

“We are excited about our partnership with
Microsoft. As India’s economy continues to grow, the BFSI sector needs to be
well-equipped to address dynamic market pressures and rapidly evolving industry
needs. It has become imperative to transform technologically to sustain a
competitive edge. A digital culture shift, designing a modern workplace that
harnesses digital intelligence and enabling mobility are key aspects. As the
Digital Banker to the Nation, Microsoft’s cutting-edge technology is helping us
lead this digital transformation by making it part of our DNA.”, said Rajnish Kumar, Chairman, State Bank of India.

Expressing his view, Satya Nadella, CEO,
Microsoft had stated, “We are thrilled to partner with State
Bank of India on their digital transformation as they harness the intelligent
cloud and build new digital capability to empower their employees; engage
customers in new ways and transform their products and services, while
maintaining security, trust and compliance with industry regulations.”

SBI will derive benefits from this digital transformation in
three phases; making itself agile by rapidly upgrading to cloud based technology,
focusing on user adoption by identifying use cases based on work profiles, and
transforming business by process alignment with the new tools, all of which
together will ultimately enhance, both, branch and customer experience.

Microsoft is committed to fuel the digital
transformation of the BFSI sector with the best-in-class cloud services like
Office 365, that are not only efficient as a productivity solution but also
highly robust, secure and scalable.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Singapore-based smart card innovator NovoFlex has announces Secure
Authenticable Identification Laminates (sAiL), a patented, groundbreaking
new process that redefines how integrated circuit (IC) chips will be embedded
into SIM cards currently used in the telecommunications sector. Novoflex is
partnering with smart card manufacturer Eastcompeace in India and CIPTA in
Indonesia to implement the IC chip in SIM cards issued by major mobile
operators in those countries.

The process departs from traditional
methods of manufacturing SIM cards, by eliminating two major steps – module
packaging and module embedding. The flexible form factor of sAiL – which
comes as a thin plastic foil – also allows it to be integrated into a range of
everyday objects.

Combined with fact that the process
requires less gold to be utilised across all process steps, this new technology
leads to significant savings for card manufacturers. As the process is
compatible with existing card manufacturing machines, sAiL can be
immediately integrated into current smartcard assembly processes.

Rajnish Giri, Managing Director of
Eastcompeace India Pvt Ltd, said: “Eastcompeace prides itself on being an early
adopter of innovative new technologies and processes. sAiLdemonstrates
a remarkable leap forward in the production process of SIM cards. We are also
excited about the possibilities of sAiLbeyond the
telecommunications sector.”

CIPTA CEO Steven Chandra said: “Our
mission at CIPTA is to harness innovation to empower ordinary individuals.
Driven by innovation, in the last few years, applications for smart cards have
proliferated across industries. Technologies such as sAIL are a game
changer, and we are glad to be working with strategic partners such as NovoFlex
to help us to envision a brighter, bolder future.”

The process has been successfully
patented in 20 countries, with more countries pending, and has already garnered
interest from major SIM card vendors across the globe. While initial demand for
sAIL is expected from the telecommunications sector, NovoFlex is already
working with key industry players to apply the sAiL technology to banking
cards and is confident that its usage will expand to transportation and
Internet of Things (IoT) in the near future.

CEO of NovoFlex, Dr. Eric Ng, said: “Our mission at NovoFlex is
to provide the enabling technologies to make objects smarter. sAiL allows
for secure authentication, and while the immediate application is in
telecommunications, the flexibility of this technology enables us to envision
possibilities much broader than that. We are very proud to introduce this new
technology in India and Indonesia, through our partners, and hope to expand
very quickly beyond telecoms.”

RBL
Bank, one of the country’s fastest growing private sector banks, has announced
the second chapter of its flagship event — The Big Pitch 2.0 — which aims to
strengthen the startup ecosystem in India. The incubation and funding contest
will be held at Amity University, Noida, on November 17, 2017.

The
core idea behind the event is to provide startups and entrepreneurs a launch
pad to pitch their ideas to angel investors, business incubators, management
consultants and advisors. The startups and entrepreneurs will get an
opportunity to engage with The Big Pitch’s knowledge partners in the field of
fundraising, consulting, legal, technology, banking and finance, and taxation.

Amity
Innovation Incubator, which has done a phenomenal job in providing incubation
support across 17 locations in India, is the exclusive incubation partner for
the event. Well-known early-stage investors such as Matrix Partners, Venture
Catalysts and Unicorn India Ventures have also come on board to explore funding
opportunities for seed and startup companies.

The
first chapter of The Big Pitch, which was held in Bangalore in 2016, generated
significant interest in the startup community across the country. Commenting on
the event, last year’s winning team, Fourth Ambit, a
specialist networking platform creating value across stakeholders in the
education ecosystem, said, “RBL Bank’s The Big Pitch was a turning point in our
startup journey which today is poised for its next phase of growth.
Winning the contest was a validation of our business model and a signal to the
investor world. We went on to raise our first round of funding of $600K, thanks
to The Big Pitch.”

Surinder Chawla, Head - Geography, Branch and
Business Banking at RBL Bank, said, “The Big Pitch 2.0 is another step in the
series of initiatives taken by RBL Bank to partner with the startup ecosystem
to launch cutting-edge products and services in the banking sector. The success
of the first chapter inspired us to take our flagship event to the next level.
In many ways, RBL Bank functions like a startup by constantly innovating and
offering the best possible solutions to our customers. It is imperative for us
to support young and entrepreneurial Indians on their startup journey, and help
them to achieve their goals.”

The
Big Pitch 2.0 will comprise 30 startups from the application pool, out of which
top six winners will have the opportunity to win curated packages from the many
event partners.

With an aim to increase the adoption rate of security solutions
and build a safer country where citizens can confidently say ‘I Am Secure’,
Godrej Security Solutions (GSS), India’s leading security solutions provider,
kick started pan-India multi-city consumer awareness campaign #IAmSecure.
During the event, the company also launched a slew of innovative home security
solutions- Wifi enabled EVE Series and SEE THRU PRO Video Door Phones.

The objective of the campaign is to empower the nation to take
charge of their own security, educate them about the various solutions and on
the importance of learning self-defense for leading a safer and secure life.
The company is also engaging with their distributors through educative
programmes.

The Mumbai and New Delhi event saw a participation of over 100
women pledging to take charge of their security and their loved ones. During
the Mumbai event, 435 influencers’ generated 1638 tweets and #IAmSecure trended
in India on the 4th position for more than 3 hours. While in
New Delhi, 44 contributors generated 227 tweets, while unique twitter accounts
reached during this campaign were more than 16 lakh. #IAmSecure keyword trended
in India on 6th position for more than 2 hours.

Insights on how one can use our right to information in case of
any crime faced, busting myths around security solutions, leveraging technology
for smart security, self defense workshop was conducted by Sandhya Shetty in
Mumbai and Viraf Vatcha, head coach of Indian karate team in New Delhi. The
event also witnessed popular stand-up comedian Atul Khatri taking a humorous
take on the need for security.

Commenting on the
objective behind initiating the aggressive multi-city campaign, Mehernosh
Pithawalla, Vice President and Global Head-Marketing, Sales and Innovation,
Godrej Security Solutions highlighted, “The security market in India has been predominantly a ‘need based’
market and not a ‘consumer-driven’ one.

Even though today’s
safety and security anxieties are not just restricted to personal safety,
but encompasses the safety of our loved ones, the market has more of
a reactive attitude towards the adoption of security measures. Taking
cognizance of this, we felt that there is a dire need to initiate a campaign
to create awareness on the need for adoption of security solutions and the
technological advancements taking place in the security solutions space.
Society is getting more tech-rich and empowered, and yet we remain as
vulnerable to crime as before. We need to
make a fundamental change in our behaviour and be more proactive about
security.”

Godrej Security
Solutions also shared a sneak peek to its latest consumer survey report on the
‘Consumer Attitude towards Home Security’ which reveals that only about 34 per
cent of women take security measures while travelling. The security measures
taken by 28 per cent of women while travelling include informing their
relatives, while only nine per cent of women use security applications on their
mobile phone while some others depended on police helpline. Only a miniscule
two per cent of women depended on pepper spray for their security.

It has launched its latest high-tech innovative products EVE and
SEETHRU PRO, resting as applications on the home owner’s smartphone, Godrej
Security Solutions wishes to give home owners the control and convenience to
watch over their homes and their loved ones with unbelievable ease.

SAP
SE has announced country-specific
findings of its 2017 SAP Hybris
Consumer Insights Report,
highlighting what makes or breaks a customer relationship for Indian consumers.
The survey of more than 7,000 consumers across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region –
with 1,000 based in India – aims to better understand what customers look for
when engaging with brands.

As consumers globally continue to take control over
their experiences with brands, organizations are taking note. A Forrester survey of Indian business and technology
decision-makers reported that 70 percent consider customer experience (CX) to
be a high or critical priority for their companies1.

With this in mind, SAP Hybris set out to determine the
sentiment of Indian consumers, arming global and local businesses with the
insights needed to best cater to this audience. Survey results show that
Indians are willing to share some information with brands – 92 percent of
Indians compared to 82 percent of additional APAC respondents. More than half
say they will provide their email address (68 percent) as well as their
shopping history and preferences (56 percent).

At the same time, Indians have high expectations for
brands, with 94 percent expecting a responsewithin
24 hours of an inquiry and half wanting brands to
surprise them, keeping the relationship alive. Additionally, 54 percent – the
highest among APAC countries surveyed – expect brands to ensure consistent
promotions both online and in-store.

“There are various factors that can establish customer
loyalty or cause a break-up,” said Nicholas Kontopoulos, Vice President, Fast
Growth Markets Marketing, SAP Hybris. “To best cater to customers and stay
ahead of their demands, organizations must first and foremost understand their
customers so they can engage them in a more personalized fashion.”

It is evident that Indian respondents are willing to
share information, but expect their data is protected while enjoying a
consistent, superior experience. Knowing what keeps customers engaged is
important, but organizations should also recognize the top four reasons Indians
break up with brands:

·User data unknown – 74 percent

·Unresponsive customer service – 73 percent

·Spamming – 59 percent

·Makes mistakes more than twice – 56 percent

To view the complete 2017 SAP Hybris Consumer Insights
Survey Report and learn more about Indian consumers’ brand engagement
preferences.

Orange Business
Services has been selected as the global supplier of Nespresso’s guest Wi-Fi
and internet service, which will be rolled out in most of its standalone
boutiques on five continents. The service will help Nespresso bridge its
in-store customer experience with its digital channels.

When customers connect
to the in-store guest Wi-Fi service, they can immediately and securely browse
the internet and connect to the Nespresso portal. There they can download the
Nespresso app, visit Nespresso.com to access digital services, browse the latest
news or get further product information. For guests who already have the
Nespresso app, they can immediately connect to it.

Orange delivers this
secure, fully-managed guest Wi-Fi service worldwide, including the local
internet connections, and ensures that it complies with strict and changing
regulatory and legal constraints. It also provides customers with a consistent
experience at all locations.

Digitally engage with
customers

The guest Wi-Fi
service gives Nespresso an opportunity to digitally engage with its customers
at its boutiques. It provides support to communicate about the latest
campaigns, maintaining a link with Nespresso’s connected customers. The guest
Wi-Fi service complements the 27 Nespresso Customer Relationship Contact
Centers (CRC) managed by Orange Business Service.

“We put our customers
at the center of everything we do, and offering secure internet connectivity in
our boutiques is part of the experience that we create for them. Orange
Business Services will help us realize this with a service that will play a
role in our omnichannel services portfolio,” said Jean-Paul Le Roux, Global B2C
Head at Nespresso.

“We are very proud to
support Nespresso’s leading customer experience strategy at a global level,
which mirrors the Orange Business Services customer focus with a digital and
human touch. With our global local approach, we can also offer Nespresso on the
ground support and services in all the markets where they operate,” said Helmut
Reisinger, executive vice president, International at Orange Business Services.

Juniper Networks, an industry leader in
automated, scalable and secure networks, today announced that SoftBank Corp. (“SoftBank”), the Japan-based
telecommunications subsidiary of global technology player SoftBank Group Corp. has deployed
Juniper’s MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers together with the Juniper
Extension Toolkit (JET) automation framework in order to upgrade and
future-proof its commercial core network.

SoftBank has
experienced exponential traffic growth in Japan over the past few years, driven
by their continued market success, as well as the increased adoption of mobile
devices, cloud services and high-definition video content. To address this
ongoing traffic growth, SoftBank required an infrastructure that could provide
industry-leading performance and capacity for today and tomorrow,
coupled with the reliability for always-on service delivery.

At the same
time, SoftBank was seeking to modernize its operations environment, and wanted
an agile and automated network solution that would reduce complexity and
increase speed of service delivery.

After an
extensive review process, SoftBank identified Juniper Networks MX Series 3D
Universal Edge Routers alongside the JET automation framework as the clear
choice for their next-generation network. With this new, state-of-the-art
commercial core network, SoftBank has dramatically increased network capacity
while at the same time implementing automation across its operations with the
opening of new network connections while significantly improving long-term
service agility.

News Highlights

For its new commercial core network, SoftBank
has selected the high-capacity MX2020 and the versatile MX104 3D Universal Edge
Routers, while also implementing JET technology.

With performance and stability being key
criteria, SoftBank valued the MX2020’s ability to increase capacity from
their current systems by 76-fold, as well as Juniper’s ability to enable
the development of advanced technologies.

In addition to greatly improving network
capacity, the MX2020 addresses SoftBank’s stringent reliability
requirements, with support for a comprehensive set of multi-layer
resiliency features that quadruples the level of redundancy offered by
their previous routers, allowing SoftBank to confidently meet customer
expectations and deliver additional stability to its services.

JET provides an automation toolkit that
enables customers to automate configuration and provisioning tasks,
enabling SoftBank to accelerate service delivery by up to 30 times when
contrasted with their previous, manual approach to provisioning and configuration. Using open Application Programming
Interfaces (APIs), JET brings greater automation capabilities to the Junos
operating system that powers and future-proofs SoftBank Corp’s commercial
core network.

Working closely with Juniper Networks,
SoftBank deployed the new MX Series routers and the JET framework without
disruption to their current services.

“As data traffic continues
to increase by-the-day, we needed to significantly upgrade our commercial core
network’s capacity, performance and automation capabilities in order to
continue providing the world-class levels of service which our customers expect
of SoftBank. After an extensive review, we found the perfect combination of
products from Juniper Networks for our requirements, says Tomohiro Sekiwa,
vice president, Core Network & Device Technology Business Unit, SoftBank
Corp.

Monday, October 30, 2017

Environmental degradation is currently the most
critical area of concern not only in India but also globally and the pace of
degradation is increasing at a rapid rate. Urbanization, Mining, Infrastructure
growth etc. have resulted in deforestation which is adversely impacting the
climate and also leaving behind severe repercussions on Human life.

With India
becoming the fastest growing economies of the world development projects are
booming like anything and as we know tree cutting is a part of majority of the
projects. Although necessary laws pertaining to compensatory afforestation are
there but in an age where climate change is fast becoming a reality they may
not suffice. Also, India recently ratified the COP21 agreement as per which we
need to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2. Keeping
in mind the aforesaid, it’s important that we start looking at ways in which
the economic development can go hand in hand with environmental protection. Our
country’s stringent forest and environmental laws and consistent involvement of
the judiciary for enforcing the same has enabled it to retain its green cover
despite huge biotic pressure.

Institute of Wood
Science and Technology (IWST) under Indian Council of Forestry Research and
Education (ICFRE), Ministry of Environment and Forest, has embarked on an
ambitious project for exploring ways to retain our existing green cover. They
have worked closely with industrial partners like Volvo Trucks, to drive
solutions like tree transplantation, which aims to retain our existing Green
Cover by using scientific and industrial knowledge. Semi mature to mature trees
which are nearly midway their lifecycle have maximum potential of carbon
sequestration. Retaining such mature trees through the technique of tree
transplantation is good for mitigation of impacts of climate change.

“After more than
one year of successful operation of the transplantation projects, the Institute
organised the seminar “Green Cover Retention 2017” to bring together
researchers, scientists, academicians and industry professionals to understand
and debate on this critical issue and help create a way forward to form
“Policies and Practices” that will help our world to be a better place for
generations to come” said by Surendra Kumar, Director, IWST.

Some key
corporates like Volvo Group, Karamjeet Singh & Co Ltd, South Eastern
Coalfields Ltd, National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) and Green
Morning Horticulture Pvt ltd are partnering with IWST and ICFRE to take a step
towards saving the environment.

The Volvo Group’s
mission is to drive prosperity through transport solutions, and sustainability
is the guiding principle that underpins our aspirations in this journey. This
also means that our products and services’ solutions are aligned in the
direction of holistic sustainability that enshrines environment care,
innovation, economic efficiency & viability, with societal inclusiveness.
Volvo Group is the world’s first automotive manufacturer to be approved by
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to participate in its Climate Savers program.

Under
the current agreement, covering the period between 2015 and 2020, we are
committed to a cumulative reduction of CO2 emissions from our products and production
by atleast 40 million tons, compared to 2013 levels. And we do this through a
focus on all steps – the manufacturing process & technology, product
technology, the product application, the transport concept and the host of
services associated with our solutions. We believe that tree transplantation
can help save millions of trees during highway construction and other building
activities and this would be an invaluable tool in society’s ambition to
preserve and increase the green cover of our country. I am glad to see the host
of stakeholders from various sections coming together at this seminar to
deliberate and create a policy recommendation to achieve this critical and
urgent need, said Kamal Bali, President & MD, Volvo Group in India.

Microsoft Researchers collectively with professors from IIT
Kharagpur are working towards developing a system that canform the basis for a deeper, more meaningful search engine.
Microsoft’s Senior Applied Researcher Manish Gupta recently partnered with
Ankan Mullick, Prof. Pawan Goyal, and Prof. Niloy Ganguly from IIT Kharagpur,
to conduct a study on extracting meaningful information from social
conversations to help search engines answer social list queries better. by
deploying artificial intelligence and machine learning.

While search engine algorithms are great at working with
fact-based queries and providing structured answers, they are surprisingly
ineffective at answering subjective and personal questions. Queries based on
human experiences and personal opinions are difficult for a standard search
engine to comprehend. Therefore, they fail to answer questions such as “How to
make small talk with new friends,” “People’s favourite memories from school,”
“How does it feel to immigrate to a new country?” or “The songs that defined
the 80s.”

The team used multi-word hashtags, also called “idioms” from
Twitter, to conduct an in-depth study to make search results much more personal
and human. The researchers collected around 4 million hashtags that were
trending between January 2015 and June 2015, and used a SVM (Support Vector
Machine) classifier to conduct this research. The classifier worked on deeply
personal and human hashtags such as #foreveralone, #awkwardcompanynames,
#childhoodfeels, and #africanproblems using factors such as duration of hashtag
popularity, related hashtags, URLs, and related hashtags to detect context and
classify the social lists accurately. The algorithm used to conduct this study
forms the basis for a better search engine for social platforms which can
assist users looking for subjective information and trusted opinions.

The study eventually proved that, by analysing multi-word hashtags
search engines can now scour social networks and detect valuable insights
from public conversations, using a highly effective and precise algorithm to
provide a deeper, more meaningful search experience.

Banking and investment services
CIOs are increasingly convinced that their old business models and
existing value propositions will not be sustainable in the future, according to
a survey from Gartner, Inc. Gartner’s 2018 CIO Agenda Survey gathered data from
3,160 CIO respondents in 98 countries and across major industries, including
354 banking and investment services CIOs.

"Digital transformation and its related
technologies such as APIs are more important for banking than for other
industries,” said Pete Redshaw, managing vice president at
Gartner. “Banks and other banking and investment services organizations clearly
recognize that the status quo is not sustainable, and they must disrupt
themselves before it is done to them."

Top Business Objectives

When it comes to strategic business
priorities, the survey found that digital business/digital transformation is
more important for banking (first priority for 26 percent of respondents) than
for all industries (17 percent). Just behind digitalization on 25 percent,
growth/ market share is a further key priority, followed by complementary focus
areas of profit improvement and customer focus (12 and 11 percent
respectively).

Banking and investment services CIOs also
place a relatively high priority on the globalization of their businesses
(seven percent), a priority which does not make the top 10 at all for the all-industries
average. Geographic expansion is clearly important for a business that is (1)
easier to scale over physical distances using electronic movements of money,
and (2) seeking higher growth in emerging markets.

Top Tech to Win

In response to the question ‘Which technology
areas do you think are most important to helping your organization
differentiate and win (achieve your mission)?’ BI/analytics topped the list with banking
sector CIOs at 26 percent followed by digitalization/digital marketing at 21
percent.

In terms of differentiating technologies, four
categories stand out when compared to other industries

-Artificial intelligence(AI) is
seen as more differentiating (eight percent) for banking than the
all-industries average (five percent).

-The
combination of application programming interfaces (APIs)
at four percent and omnichannel/multichannelat
three percent are not especially high, but they are not present at all in the
all-industries top 10.

-Legacy
modernization is a top 10 item for the banking industry, but not present in the
all-industries list.

-The Internet of Things(IoT)
is a top-10 item for all industries (six percent), but is not present for
banking and investment services.

"These priorities point to a continuing
tension between two opposing forces," said Redshaw. "On the one
hand, there is a need to rapidly transform the business, while, on the other
hand, there is the innate inertia that arises from a huge IT estate that
supports a heavily regulated industry."

Note that blockchain does not feature (it ranked
twentieth for banking and investment services). Despite the attention and
visibility, it is not yet seen as a differentiating technology for banks. That
may change in the near future.

Figure 1. Top Tech to Win

Rank

Banking/Investment
Priorities

%
Respondents

1

BI/analytics

26%

2

Digitalization/digital
marketing

21%

3

Mobility/mobile
applications

11%

4

Artificial
intelligence

8%

5

Cloud
services/solutions

8%

6

Legacy
modernization

4%

7

Application
programming interface

4%

8

Customer
relationship management

4%

9

Automation

3%

10

Omnichannel/multichannel

3%

Source: Gartner (October 2017)

Top New Tech Spending

Planned additional spend on digitalization/digital
marketing is also much more prominent in the banking and investment services
sector (22 percent) than the all-industries average (12 percent).

"This is an industry that recognizes that
a firm must become truly digital - in culture, value and technology - if it is
to stand a chance of surviving and thriving," Redshaw said.

Cloud is ranked lower in the banking
sector (fourth versus second for all industries) but has the same percentage
assigned to it (13 percent). Banks would like to make more use of public cloud, but are held back by their
risk-averse culture and their regulators.

For AI, there is only a small difference in
absolute terms between banking and all industries, but it is a large one in
relative terms (7 versus 4 percent — nearly double). Being able to turn raw
data into actionable information by spotting unexpected patterns or developing
superior algorithms will strongly differentiate banks that do this well from
their more mediocre rivals.